A Fisking

Hey, kids! Lookit here — the world’s first self-fisking newspaper column! It’s a real juicy one by Colman McCarthy in today’s Washington Post. Now, McCarthy used to be a Post columnist, but that job was a little bit too rough and tumble for his untainted hands. These days, he finds work at the Center for Teaching Peace. But McCarthy was kind enough to take the time out of his busy schedule to throw up on your breakfast table, and so I thought I’d return the favor.

Sure, I know I told you it was a self-fisking model, but you’ve got to let a pundit have some fun now and then.

Let’s begin:

Now that asking and telling has ceased to be problematic in military circles, ROTC has resurfaced as a national issue: Will universities such as Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools be opened to Reserve Officers’ Training Corps since colleges can no longer can argue that the military is biased against gays and therefore not welcome?

Yes, we’re going to find out if our Ivy League schools are merely anti-military, or anti-military and hypocritical. I can hardly wait.

When I suggested that Notre Dame’s hosting of ROTC was a large negative among the school’s many positives, Hesburgh disagreed. Notre Dame was a model of patriotism, he said, by training future officers who were churchgoers, who had taken courses in ethics, and who loved God and country. Notre Dame’s ROTC program was a way to “Christianize the military,” he stated firmly.

So far, so good, I suppose — although Hesburgh might be shocked at just how many men and women of faith already serve. Even in the Seventies. But I digress, so let’s get to McCarthy’s point:

I asked if he actually believed there could be a Christian method of slaughtering people in combat, or a Christian way of firebombing cities, or a way to kill civilians in the name of Jesus. Did he think that if enough Notre Dame graduates became soldiers that the military would eventually embrace Christ’s teaching of loving one’s enemies?

Well. That mask came off rather quickly, didn’t it? According to McCarthy, the United States military is all hoo-rah for slaughtering people and firebombing cities and stacking up civilian skulls into mighty pyramids to Jesus. Never minding, of course, that after the American military is done doing all those nasty things, it then prefers to pack up and go home and lets the foreign survivors — if any! — go back to running their own countries.

OK, so Germany and Japan were special cases, occupied for years. But since those countries actually invented modern city-smashing and civilian-slaughtering, they were very special cases, indeed. Besides, Germany and Japan became much more civilized — thanks in no small part to that hootin’, hollerin’, and killin’ American military.

You nailed it. Only they don’t seem to be stuck in 1968, they are stuck. Same worldview, same attitude, same lack of perspective or common sense, and in some sad cases, same hairstyle and fashion sense, as when they were smug, sheltered, know-it-all college kids.

He’s the braindead heir of the sickly and depressed William James. His treatise to the world is not the Moral Equivalence of War…it is the Moral Equivalence of Everything by the Philosopher Fool.

Precisely.

The equivalencies have been pushed so far that absolutely nothing has real significance.

The edges are far too padded – if he’d ever suffered at all, he would know that the world is not gray mush, and his serene detachment from the “ugly brutality” of combat is not wisdom, but the most dangerous sort of delusion.

Now THAT is what I call powerful writing! How in the world do you think up these colorful phrases? So taut and precise and original. If only every conservative were so thoughtful and original and persuasive.

This photo embodies what makes the difference between an American soldier and almost any other soldier in the history of the world. My heart swells with pride. Our soldiers believe in America’s goodness and greatness, even when the despicable and ungrateful amongst those they defend desert them. I’m imagining what McCarthy would be doing if he were suddenly put in that soldier’s place. He’d be hiding behind women and children, so perhaps after all he has chosen the right side for himself to be on with his rhetoric.

I will never hire anyone with a grievance studies degree. I suspect I am not alone.

No, you’re definitely not alone. Why bring a professional malcontent into your company? “Grievance studies”, “angry studies”, it’s all the same – they’re filled with years of resentment and taught to see themselves as victims. Who wants to deal with that day after day?

Worse, you can never correct a worker with such a background because they always view themselves as a victim; and God forbid you fire such a person because they’ll try to bring suit because, again, they’re the victim. Hiring someone with such a degree is inviting a baseless lawsuit.

“Peace studies”? Just another flavor of “grievance studies” with an added frosting of self-righteousness.

Who would sign up for that? Obviously, there are the limousine-liberal spoiled trust fund babies who will never have to work a day in their lives.

Also among the attendees are some young ignoramuses of limited means, who were conned into getting student loans (which cannot be discharged through bankruptcy) in order to pay for a useless degree that won’t equip them to earn enough money to pay it back. This becomes another example of modern-day peonage (i.e., debt-slavery).

The eventual upshot is that the federal government will offer some type of indentured servitude to people with unpaid student loans, so that they can work off their debts. This might involve military service.

If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all. Libs are nice, conservatives are not. Libs are smart, conservatives are not. Libs are right, conservatives are wrong. All different ethnicities, cultures and religions should be tolerated. Oops–Christians should not. Everything You Ever Needed to Know about Liberals, summed up to fit in the space between their ears.

I was always annoyed with those sophomoric bumper stickers that say, “What if they gave a War and nobody came?” and it’s unanswered question…what happens next?

The leftist ‘head in the sand’ attitude is evident in McCarthy’s ban ROTC screed. It is so extreme I wonder if he wrote it just to provoke a reaction?

As for ROTC classes being easy, they were never meant to be anything more than basic preparation for going into the service and being able to fundamentally supervise people. It was only later, in civilian life, that I realized what valuable management skills that I had acquired while on active duty.

disban the military… let the leftists be annihalated by the islamists…and they will be the first to loose thier heads…then the rest of us can deal with the islamists once and for all…we can do this now or later but ultimately it will have to be done

I see where you’re coming from, but it’s a bad idea. Once our military is gone, and the Muslims have made short work of the left, it’ll be much too late to bring our military back to defeat the Muslims.

Just as the Soviet socialists under Stalin once made the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with the Nazis (some of the Nazis were Muslims, by the way), the Euro-American socialists of today have made a devil’s bargain with the Muslim jihadis.

It won’t be easy, but we have to dig in and get ready to fight back against both of them at once, using everything we’ve got.

Bojo has exactly the right idea. That a major US newspaper could publish such garbage and that a large segment of the American public could read this sort of extremism and not have any qualms about it means these people are beyond reason. I don’t feel comfortable living side-by-side with these people as I’m sure they don’t like living with me.

When ideologies are so drastically different, its time to split. Give the left exactly what it want, and let it hang itself. I don’t want to have to wonder if the person beside me hates the country so much that he morally equates its soldiers to the Taliban.

Those who are incapable of discerning between the actions of the US and those of the Taliban have little human sense of right and wrong. They were probably born with a moral compass so out of whack that they are dangerous to be around to begin with.

They deserve their own country. We deserve to be away from them. We truely must find a way to amicably divide this country geographically with the amount of space allotted to each new country divided according to the amount of people who want to live there.

And I will never again have to look over my shoulder wondering if my own countryman has my back or not.

Yo Keith. The liberals/progressives already have their country. It is called California. This state is an experiment in how utterly wrong liberals are when they think they can run things better. An interesting blog is Robin of Berkeley – a recovering liberal who has describe living in the conservative hell of Berkeley (liberal paradise – for now). Maybe we can ship liberals to California and then, when they are all there, we dig a moat on its borders with Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona (but not Mexico) and let them flounder and fail and become an actual third world, soon to be undeveloped country.

All well and good except we need a Pacific port. We won’t be able to buy it from the new nation of Pacifica (apt name, yes?) since money means nothing to them. We must take it by force which I think can be done in 6 days. I suggest we run it along the Mexican border to San Diego, thereby severing Pacifica from Mexico. We will guard the border well and Pacifica soon will have to find people to do the jobs Pacificans don’t want, a long list indeed. Long term this will lead to a labor shortage which can be filled by immigrants from Texas, thereby changing the political climate of Pacifica and eventually electing a regime friendly to the USA. At that point we can consider reunification a la Germany and Yemen. Until reunification, another advantage of an independent Pacifica is that every time Pacifica decides to save a 2-inch fish and deny farmers the right to water their fields we extend an open invitation to said farmers to legally migrate to the US and make up for the lost crops and resultant inflation in food prices. Pacifica will become a net food importer and sanctuary for Mediterranean Fruit Flies. Every time Pacifica decides that cars must be built that get 150 mpg there will be no automatic push to spread this rot to the rest of the USA. When Pacificans choose school textbooks calling for the extirpation of the human race there will be less pressure for US school systems to follow. Congress will lose key votes that have stalled drilling in Alaska so that can begin quickly (another reason we need a Pacific port). Of course there are wrinkles to all this to be yet worked out, but we are up to the task.

I’ve been blogging about secession for quite some time now. Matter of fact, last spring I was banned from another forum, mostly for talking too much about that topic. Funny how the idea is finally catching on.

I believe that secession is very likely the only way that we can stop the federal government from continuing to sell us out to the left and to the jihadis. I, for one, am unwilling to continue serving as part of a host organism for these evil parasites to feed off of.

Glad I’m not alone. The strength of the country once the liberals are gone would be a wonder to behold. Unfortunately, I think most conservatives see it as a loss of strength rather than just the opposite. What could be stronger than a unified polity based on free thought and free will that celebrates the enlightenment in all its manifestations? And we certainly don’t need a war for it–just an agreement.

I read the comments by this fish bucket earlier this morning. I cannot understand how anyone can be so insulated from reality to have that opinion. 24 years in the Air Force, I have been to a lot of places in the world. I found if I kept my manners, the US military is still one of the more respected institutions in the world. Go to Korea (away from the Army bases) almost any where in rural Europe, everywhere in America and shoot, even in Canada we get respect and admiration. I got a feeling a servicemember, probably a Marine, stole the only girlfriend he ever had.

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
— John Stuart Mill

He is just a symptom of the moral and social decay prolugated by the 60′s hippies. By the way, the demonstrators were infiltrated by the communists. And the rot continues to erode our society. The military was the one institution that still worked pretty well. We’ll see how it goes after DADT is repealed. Let’s just say, I plan on not relying on the sissified military to save me.

McCarthy is an ardent pacifist. The only thing you can say to guys like him is if you don’t want to fight, then don’t fight. Nobody’s making you pick up a sword.

If you can stand there when American children are kidnapped by Muslim terrorists and then executed in cold blood by being flown into the sides of buildings, as they were on 9/11/01, and still not get motivated to kill the people that did it…then fine, stay out of it.

I don’t want you on my team, anyway. You’re basically useless. You ain’t going to get my back, no matter what. If someone tries to kill me, you’re going to wave a flower at them, mouth some pious platitudes…and then let them kill me. That’s what pacifists do.

I have no use, and no respect for people like that. So, screw you (and your opinions).

As for what Jesus would do (an issue raised by McCarthy)…beats me. If Jesus had been on one of those airliners on 9/11 would he have told all those people not to use violence against the highjackers who were about to murder them? Would he have told those parents on the planes to turn the other cheek and just let the terrorists kill them and their kids? Maybe. I dont know.

But, I know what I’d do. Blow them straight to hell, if I could, and die fighting if I couldn’t. Then I’ll answer to God, for that and all the other sins I’ve committed, when the time comes.

How convenient it is to summon the deeds of Jesus out of context. Don’t forget about him driving the money lenders out of the temple or expelling demons from the possessed. There is indeed a difference between being merciful and being a pacifist.

Pacifism can only exist under the protection of an honorable warrior cadre. Without such, you are simply worm food in a mass grave…slaughtered, gone…replaced by something perhaps morally worse, but certainly stronger than you were.

Pacifism is a noble gesture, it is an admirable desire, but it must be DEFENDED by those willing to suffer for the safety of their “kind and admirable” neighbors.

SOMEONE in the clan needs to stand up and say:
“YOU! Leave my pacifists alone, they aint bothering nobody…
back the fuck off, NOW, or I’ll kick your ass”

I will respect the good nature of pacifists as long as they accept the fact they are a LIABILITY to our safety, not an asset.

Once they become smug and arrogant, I simply dismiss them as cowards…

“incapable of being free, unless made and kept so, by the exursions of better men than themselves”

George Orwell did a very good evisceration of the false morality of pacifists. See “On Pacifism” and various other essays. (His 4-volume collected letters and essays is well worth reading.) When these pacifists decide to commit suicide*, well, so be it. But when they tell others to do so then they become not just fools but enemies of civilization.

(* But of course they aren’t choosing to commit suicide, because they always choose to live where they will be protected by those warriors they profess to despise.)

I wonder — can we call his effort to blacklist academic programs he opposes “McCarthyism”?http://rhymeswithright.mu.nu/archives/310006.php
By the way, if you want an idea about what Colman McCarthy thinks is the proper content of academic study, please read this old post of mine about the course he offers at a suburban Maryland high school. If this is what he views as “intellectual purity” at an academic institution, heaven preserve us from his ever having any real control over what is taught on any campus anywhere — he is an intellectual and academic FRAUD.

Y’all are wide of the mark when you point a finger at the 1960s, or hippies. Pacifism is much older. Case in point:

In the U.S. in 1933, Brown University conducted a poll of 21,725 students from sixty-five U.S. colleges, and the poll found 8,415 who declared themselves pacifists, 7,221 who believed that the only justification for their nation bearing arms would be its having been invaded, and only 6,089 who declared that they would fight another war if the government ordered them to do so. [note] In February 1933, students at Oxford University debated the question that “this House will in no circumstance fight for king and country.” At the conclusion of the debate, 275 undergraduates voted against fighting for king and country, and 153 voted for fighting for king and country.

Casey, I’ll bet that most of those Brown and Oxford pacifists donned the uniform a few years later, when they weren’t playing high-minded campus word games, but were out in the real world facing the very real possibility that their freedoms would be extinguished by ruthless totalitarians.

And in their defense (sort of), I’ll bet that some of those ’30′s undergrads had fathers and uncles and older brothers who died miserable deaths in the trenches fighting “to make the world safe for democracy.” The Brits certainly did – their WWI losses were frightful. So, viewed from that perspective, I have some sympathy for them. I wouldn’t lump them in with McCarthy’s spoiled, sanctimonious anti-war boomers.

The WWII generation is referred to so frequently today as “The Greatest Generation” that young people might get the idea that their sacrifices and struggles were always recognized and revered. I can tell you – hippies like McCarthy NEVER honored their parents as “The Greatest Generation” back in the ’60′s and ’70′s, or showed the slightest gratitude for having been born into a world of prosperity and freedom. I think the boomers actually RESENTED the bravery and military service of their elders, because they couldn’t live up to it. So the thing to do was to proclaim that military bravery and valor were not admirable traits at all, no matter what the cause. To admit that the fight against Hitler and Tojo was righteous would have validated their parents’ service and hippie peaceniks like McCarthy couldn’t stand that idea. Their pacifism was part and parcel of their general rejection of all of their parents’ values. (And, given the amount of slack they were willing to cut the Viet Cong and characters like Che and Arafat and domestic terrorists like Ayers, the aversion to non-violence was pretty selective.)

(Obviously some boomers served well in Vietnam. Those are not the boomers I am talking about.)

Donna, you are of course correct. Those naive young men quite literally paid for their idealism a decade later.

Still, I think it is important that pacifism existed before a wiener like McCarthy was a wet dream running down his mommy’s leg, no matter how much the 1960s “movement” cadre would like to claim credit for all original ideas the past fifty years.

I guess you haven’t read many of Colman McCarthy’s columns before. He used to publish the same sort of stuff with regularity when he was a regular columnist for the Post years ago. I stopped paying attention to his “peace studies” schtick in the early 90s, though I was already tired of what he had to say in the late 80s. I still wince when I think about reading his smug column responding to the Oliver Stone film Platoon where he talked about taking some teenagers to see the film and then lecturing them about the evils of America and the military.

Oh, anyone with half a brain, or who is familiar with history, or served in uniform. That’s all…

War is an evil thing, no matter the cause. William T. Sherman is famous for saying “War is Hell.” Some of his other remarks:

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.

(his letter to Atlanta)

I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers … it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated … that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

This, from the man whose name is still anathema in the South a century & a half later.

All of us are familiar with the loathing that many Americans feel for the Confederate battle flag, the “Stars and Bars.” One thing we should learn from Mr. McCarthy is that there are many Americans, maybe just as many, who loathe the American flag, the “Stars and Stripes.” I bet Mr. McCarthy would refuse to wear an American flag pin on his lapel.

I am a Notre Dame graduate, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), and a firm supporter of Father Heburgh’s stance on the ROTC program at ND. My only regret: that I did not serve in both the United States Peace Corps and the United States Armed Services.

Have no regrets my friend. Service of your conscious with sweat and toil in the cause of Peace, without also becoming a Warrior, is nothing to be ashamed of. The fact that you put up and did something about your beliefs, instead of just TALKING about which camp up right or wrong, is an honorable feat.

Truth be told, many Peace Corps types simply have a different personality than your typical Marine Infantryman. It is entirely possible you would have been morally and spiritualy agonized serving in the Armed Forces, who’s focus is (and should be) Extreme Violence.

Agonized as I believe I would have been, had I been forced to build schools and try to improve the wreched lives of those poor souls living under crushing poverty and injustice caused by the kind of ruthless and malignant evil that permeates certain parts of the world.

If I saw a hit and run accident, I would chase the driver….because allowing him to flee, free of consequence for his actions makes my blood boil, because I know he WILL do it again, with impunity, and never care.

My wife, on the other hand, could care less about the driver…catching him will not lessen the pain of the injured. She would rush to help the injured first…

It takes BOTH TYPES to make things work.

(but I will go to my grave convinced that severe PUNISHMENT of wrong-doers is the best way to PREVENT further suffering of the innocents)

You’d chase the driver, eh? Wrong answer. But it does point to what animates the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals are motivated by compassion. Conservatives are motivated by revenge. one leads to heaven, the other leads to hell . . . on Earth. Thanks for fucking it up for the rest of us.

You’d really like to believe that liberals are more compassionate than conservatives …
Too bad the real world shows a different picture …
Why is it so many liberals admire Mao and Communism ? Between Stalin and Mao more people died as a result of their “compassion” than have died in all the wars of the last 200 years …
I know you think you are more compassionate but how are those that benefit from your compassion getting along ? Your compassion has a rotten track record at actually helping people over the long run …
Your assumption that only people that think like you (i.e. liberal) can have compassion shows just how frozen your mind is … your ignorance is only exceeded by your arrogance …

Profiling is the act of assigning suspicion based on irrelevant characteristics. I call out conservatives here because they open their mouths and prove themselves fools and worthy of judgment. That’s not profiling. That’s truth.

Yes, I would chase the driver, so he could be CAUGHT…because chances are, someone else will end up crushed under his wheels tomorrow, because he’s demonstrated his lack of regard for peoples rights already, by mowing one down before my very eyes, and fleeing like the coward (you are familiar with cowards, right?).

And by “chase” I mean anything from writing down his plate number and getting a visual burned into my brain housing group, to smashing the drivers window and dragging him out by his throat if thats at all possible.

Good people are around to help the victim. STRONG people need to be around to catch/punish the perp…

because it PREVENTS more VICTIMS from suffering needlessly.

whereas, you would make everyone bend over and submit to every evil, because it makes you feel better about your own weakness and fear.

“Good people are around to help the victim. STRONG people need to be around to catch/punish the perp…”

That’s not the issue. If you see a hit-and-run, do you help the victim or chase the driver? Simple question. There are no “Oh, lucky us, there’s an ambulance that just happens to be passing by. Good. Mount up!” Sorry, no unlikely dodges to your choice, just you and the victim and the receding taillights of “the perp.” (Clearly a term you learned watching TJ Hooker all those years. Time well spent.)

You conservatives here seem to agree to chase the driver, because he did something wrong and may inflict similar damage in the future. I say you’re dead wrong. I say help the victim, because their need is clear and immediate and helping them may save their life. You’d rather let the victim die so you could play Chuck Norris. That’s the difference between a liberal and a conservative. We deal in reality and humanity. You deal in theater and revenge fantasy.

Here, I’ll use your own analogy. If you saw your daughter get run over by a hit-and-run driver, would you chase the driver or help your daughter?

Don’t be such a putz. Your ideology is getting in the way of your sanity.

Hopefully, the people doing the mending and the fighting are both good and strong. I would like to think it is possible to be both. I had a granduncle who served as a medic in Italy in WWII, while his brothers were carrying rifles in the Pacific. He was not that much different than they were.

Mr. McCarthy should take up a tenured position at a Madrassa in Pakistan or Afghanistan. The Taliban NEED his point of view yesterday. And when he goes, take his citizenship of the USA, let him be a citizen of those places, or “the world”. He’ll still be a whore or the left.

Then we educate Cheney to the atrocities perpetuated by his psychopathic ideas. Then we give him a cup of tea and turn him loose onto the streets to defend himself.

Kind of like that? I know, mine doesn’t involve murder. What can I say, I’m compassionate. After all . . . (let’s see, what can I say that you will relate to?) . . . ah! . . . What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Accidents do happen occasionally…innocents dies in twos and threes because were not perfect, thanks for reminding us we’re the good guys, and dont have (pray for) mountains of these bodies, and rivers of blood as our goal, like Muslims do.

As a 26 year military veteran I can tell you a good use for a ‘peace studies’ major…..

Nothing like a fresh body to stop a bullet. If they’re so damned opposed to the military, get out in front and demand peace. I’ll wait: With both my trauma kits (the one to fix it, and the one to inflict it).

I keep reading your entries, looking for a scintilla of the compassionate liberal you espouse to be. All I see is intolerance and profiling, unsupported by facts, and now childish anger. Go back to your sandbox, fart in the mud and giggle with your other mud-slinging fact-deficient liberal buddies, and stop trying to impress the grown-ups.

Jeez, I was reading the same sort of dreck from McCarthy when I lived in DC in the 80′s and ’90′s. I’m sure it will shock you to know the guy was not a charter member of the Ronald Reagan fan club. I thought McCarthy died a long time ago. Well, perhaps he did and some geek set up an automatic Colman McCarthy column generator. That’s entirely possible because I’m not seeing one fresh idea or original insight. I’ll bet McCarty still has a yellowing “War is bad for children and other living things” poster hanging somewhere in his home. Plus chronic arm pain caused by patting himself on the back incessantly over the course of 45 years or so, because he’s such a saint.

It’s funny how these types are so quick to lecture America but you never see them going anywhere else to peddle their drivel. Maybe Con-man (sic) can visit with the Taliban soldiers he so admires and convince them of the correctness of his views.

“It is the soldier, not the reporter, Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the organizer, Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, Who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

I wonder if McCarthy feels that peace is so important that it is worth fighting for. I would guess that he would say it is, but he sees the battlefield as being newspapers and pamphlets and t-shirts and bumper stickers and toughts. And the enemy is, of course, the concept of “war”, not the actual, you know, real enemy with guns and the ability to oppress violently.

I find his way of thinking so far removed from reality that I cannot follow the logic. Hating soliders for war is like hating the police for rape or murder.

Milton, why do you assume there is some logic somewhere in McCarthy’s position that people like us can’t understand? If they have to argue that sunlight tastes like vanilla or that taking private property from owners will make us prosperous, they will. When conservatives take a liberal’s comment seriously and dissect it you are falling into their trap. They speak to make their supporters angry at their opponents and to make their opponents play under the liberal premise.

Conservatives are playing by Mayberry rules while the liberals are playing by prison rules.

“I asked if he actually believed there could be a Christian method of slaughtering people in combat, or a Christian way of firebombing cities, or a way to kill civilians in the name of Jesus. Did he think that if enough Notre Dame graduates became soldiers that the military would eventually embrace Christ’s teaching of loving one’s enemies?

The interview quickly slid downhill.”

Ha ha, this clown is talking out of his ass. The Catholic church has been chewing on the religious ramifications and justifications of war for a thousand years, yet a single brave journalist manages to fluster a priest serving for over half a century with freshman-level attacks over concerns for noncombatants that are only part of the western culture due to the writings of St Augustine and St Aquinas. Right. I’m sure that it happened that way, and not that McCarthy lost his shit when his juvenile postulations were firmly countered by a significantly deeper thinker.

hey, wiredog, as if the Left, with it’s deep contempt for history, cares anything about the Church’s Just War theories. Gee, Ezra Klein really doesn’t know why we put such stock in the Constitution, a fuddy-duddy, old-fashioned sort of thing, so what makes you think McCarthy has any reverence for Augustine or Aquinas? Why, they didn’t even own cell-phones -how can they possibly have been as smart as a modern liberal hipster?

Enough with the commiserating and dumping on a hapless moron. Only two posters really said what needed to be said which is what are we-you-going to do about the left? How much longer can we live with the left? And what will it take for us to destroy the left and save America?

Or are you all here to make yourselves feel good by vicariously body-slamming the left in your posts?

I am beginning to wonder if people like Colman are worth defending anymore. Pacifism requires the courage only to surrender. It is not better than those who would fight against evil, it supports it by denigrating those who would defend the pacifists.
But then I think about that 19 year old grunt, 12,000 miles from home who drinks too much, swears too much, smokes too much, but is willing to lay down his life for his fellow man.
Just like Jesus said.
And then I know who the real moral person is, and who the pretender.

“I do believe we should forgive those people who perpetrated 9/11 and ask that they forgive us.”

The people that perpetrated 9/11 is Saudi Arabia, specifically the House of Saud.
I really wish one of the writers in PJM would have the courage to finally write about Saudi funded Wahabbi schools, where the money comes from, who funds them, etc, etc. These are the breeding grounds of todays and tomorrows terrorist.

We read article after article here about Alqueda and the Taliban, but nothing on BCCI bank which is where these organizations got their start and funding from, or the relationship BCCI had with other agencies worldwide.

The error after 9/11 was not in invading, but in invading Iraq. It should have been Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. We had the opportunity to cut the head of the snake off and we blew it.

As an ROTC cadet in 1985-87 (University of Tennessee, Knoxville – AFROTC) on scholarship, I can certainly address one of Mr. McCarthy’s points in particular. The only students who got the “free tuition and monthly stipend” perk were the scholarship cadets, and we were a definite minority. The numbers are more balanced now, but it’s still only about half the cadets at your typical institution that are on scholarship. Third-year and fourth-year cadets do get the monthly allowance for living expenses, which ranges from $300 to $500 per academic month, even if they aren’t on scholarship. (If ~$5,000 per year is enough to sway you into doing something you find repellent, then you are hurting for money, my friend.)

It’s difficult to extract the percentages of cadets on scholarship, but based on some quick-and-dirty Googling, it looks to be around 50% at most, and in the freshman and sophomore years, significantly less… which matches my experience in the program. If Mr. McCarthy only interviewed scholarship cadets, he had to be cherry-picking his subjects, and doing so with deliberate intent; at my school, I believe that we had seven scholarship cadets out of about 30 in our class. (My recollection may not be precise, as time has clouded my memories since 1985, but I’ll stand up for the general proportion.)

I will say that the classes were not especially difficult, but you had to have perfect attendance; otherwise, you answered to the Colonel commanding the detachment about why you were not present, and he did not tolerate excuses. I had plenty of other classes that were just as easy, but nobody else cared if I showed up. AFROTC was the only class that demanded an obituary when I said that I had missed class because of a grandparent’s funeral. We also had quite a few students involved because they thought it was important, and the “guaranteed job” factor didn’t enter into our thinking; we assumed that if we graduated with a degree that we’d get a job.

I’m continually amused by people such as McCarthy who seem to fail to realize that it is civilian government that decides what the US military does. Whether it’s admitting gays or “firebombing cities” and “slaughtering people.”

A righteous fisking is a thing of beauty – thanks PJM! – unfortunately, the fisked article is truly ugly in so many ways.

My feelings on the subject have been well – in fact much better than I ever could – summed up by many of the commenters.

I forget the author of the quote, but someone said once “every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier”. Perhaps Mr McC could not forgive himself and his self hating can only find expression by transference…

Let’s face it; Jesus is/was NOT a practical or patriotic person. He is good to pray to for help or to model certain kinds of non-selfish behavior, but most practical people just ignore half of what he is quoted as having said, otherwise, we would have a lot more Quakers and pacifists.

God is not love; God is superior firepower. Or if God IS love, firepower trumps God.

Q: But given that violence occurs, can’t it be morally necessary to meet violence with violence? Take the Civil War. It was a horrific slaughter, but at the same time, it was also noble.

McCarthy: What was noble about the Civil War?

Q: It helped bring about the end of slavery.

McCarthy: No, that wasn’t the intention of the Civil War. Lincoln’s intention was to keep the Union together. That was an unnecessary war, as all wars are unnecessary. That’s the pacifist argument, which I agree with.

Q: Okay, forget the Civil War. What about World War II? There’s a war where there was a horrific genocide occurring, and it was stopped.

McCarthy: Hitler could have been waited out. He might have been overthrown by his own government. Who knows? To have 50 million people killed : Hitler would have died within 10 years no matter what he did. That’s an argument you rarely hear.

I’ll tell you what McCarthy is…He’s the scum of the earth, and if there was any justice in this world, he wouldn’t be sitting on his fat ass in America in 2010, he’d be in a Nazi death camp in Poland in 1943, or slaving his life away in a cotton field in Mississippi in 1850, so he could experience first hand the consequences of his morally bankrupt philosophy.

“Einsatzgruppen (German: “task forces”;[1] singular Einsatzgruppe) were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories. The Einsatzgruppen operated throughout the territory occupied by the German armed forces following the German invasions of Poland, in September, 1939, and later, of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The Einsatzgruppen carried out operations ranging from the murder of a few people to operations which lasted over two or more days, such as the massacres at Babi Yar (33,771 killed in two days) and Rumbula (25,000 killed in two days). The Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the murders of over 1,000,000 people, and they were the first Nazi organizations to commence mass killing of Jews as an organized policy.”

Relax. The leaders of tomorrow are those men and women who have served in the military, many of them toughened in real combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The country’s future is in good hands. The liberals provide an important counterpoint but they have no engine. When fueled by whines, complaints and anger, the vehicle soon sputters out.

Yeah, I know that it is the NYT and some people won’t care for some of the inferences, but this article in today’s NYT and the reader comments is more relevant than McCarthy’s (or our) babble.

“WAUTOMA, Wis. — Life changed for Shawn Eisch with a phone call last January. His youngest brother, Brian, a soldier and single father, had just received orders to deploy from Fort Drum, N.Y., to Afghanistan and was mulling who might take his two boys for a year. Shawn volunteered.

So began a season of adjustments as the boys came to live in their uncle’s home here. Joey, the 8-year-old, got into fistfights at his new school. His 12-year-old brother, Isaac, rebelled against their uncle’s rules. And Shawn’s three children quietly resented sharing a bedroom, the family computer and, most of all, their parents’ attention with their younger cousins…..

Why do you hate America like you do? Why do you do so much to tear down fellow Americans? You have no knowledge or respect for our history. Maybe if you put some skin in the game you’d feel a little differently.

Early in my career, as a young Marine, I recall an op-ed (sorry, can’t remember the source, maybe someone can find it) that opined ” Most Americans tend to consider Marines in a way similar to how they defer to God, as in “We don’t really want to be bothered by ‘em, until we really need ‘em”. They don’t want the “Gunny Highway, hard charging, hard drinking, well trained killer to be allowed to roam free amongst the citizenry in day-to-day life, but when the $h!t comes down, that’s the bad@$$ you want out there fighting for you and yours. No man or woman craves peace more than this tired old dog, BUT, I will die before my country falls. mr. mccarthy, your gutless self may despise war, but you’d better pray a few of your neighbors aren’t so foolish and delusional.

Every week I visit an old Marine Gunny Sargent in his rest home. He gets few visitors. At 17, in 1942, he went into Guadalcanal with a bolt action Springfield. At the time, we owned half of the air strip. The Marine aviators took off from it, bombed the other end, then attempted to land, reload, and try again. While in combat, he got an appendicitis, doubled up. So they dragged him back to the Battalion aid station, a few feet, and cut him open. Bullets whizzed through the tent. They laid him in a cot, as he could not sit up, gave him a 45, and told him to shoot anyone coming through the flap, as they would not be friendly. On that cot, he decided to be a real Catholic, and has been a daily communicant since WWII.

He informs me that the US Marines guard the Pearly Gates. I am certain he will shortly enter. However, I have serious doubts if the smart people at Harvard and the Washington Post will make it. Smart people do not take irrational risks. However, the deciding issue is Semper Fi. Some really are, deep in their hearts.

I wish every Marine, and any one who has worn a US uniform, a Happy New Year. And thank you.

This man McCarthy has almost certainly never had to answer for his ideas in the real world.

He apparently does not believe that evil exists in the world (with the possible exception of Republicans), evil that cannot be reasoned with, evil that doesn’t care how peaceful you are, evil that is more than happy for you to “wait him out” while he slaughters you and your family. (As someone or other once said, being a pacifist is like expecting the charging bull to leave you alone because you’re a vegetarian.)

How would he cope with evil, if he had no choice but to stare it in the face? When I served in the IDF (which is a conscript army, hence has some peacenik draftees in its ranks), I heard an answer to that question, and it ain’t pretty. I heard combat troops tell horror stories of the peacenik who yearned to actually meet the enemy on patrol or on guard duty, so that he could talk with him and explain to him. Sooner or later, he generally got his wish… and found, to his horror, that the enemy didn’t want to listen to him; the enemy wanted to kill him. He would then snap completely (if he lived), spraying bullets in all directions while screaming like a banshee. Not a good person to have around in a crisis.

Bottom line: peace is desirable. So are many other things. But you generally have to go through some major unpleasantness to earn the good stuff. Or, to throw in another random misquotation: “War is hell. War should be hell; it’s what makes war worth avoiding. But sometimes you come to something worse than hell. And then we must fight.”

Have you ever noticed how liberals/progressives/socialists always say “they support the men and women of the military” but that they hate the military. They support the men and women of the military. The military does the burning of villages, raping of women and children, and the murdering of the innocent (and contributing to global warming or cooling or disruption or whatever). But the men and women who do this are okay in their book. Sheesh. It’s a wonder their heads don’t explode from all of the bull excrement that is building up in there.

Have you ever noticed how conservatives /regressives/fascists always say “they support the men and women of the military” but that they never served themselves (Cheney, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, O’Reilly, Beck, the First Dude . . . W).

You got us there. They should all be like Hillary and lie about running under enemy fire while actually being showered in flowers.

You can find awful examples on either side.

I do think that our future Presidents, whether Dim or Repub, should be required to have spent X number of years in the military so as not to do disgrace (if not downright betrayal) to the women and men in uniform, like the current BOzo in the WH. His military salute is a hoot. The Commander-in-Chief should be required to have taken commands before being allowed to be the supreme one giving them. Duh.

“Conservatives are all talk and no balls.”
Let’s see, the military vote is overwhelmingly conservative, so lots of conservatives must have some balls. (Conversely, the ball-less ones must be the cowardly Dims’ who have repeatedly attempted to “lose” our soldiers’ votes).

“Too broadly drawn?” Yep. (It’s called intolerant profiling).

“Unfair? Ridiculous?” Yep. ’nuff said.

“Willfully ignorant?” Yes to the latter, not sure about the former. Depends on if you’re really as ignorant as you sound.

“Cowardly?” see my 1st point above re: balls.

“Self-serving?” Who cares?

I do not see a compassionate liberal here. You seem motivated by mindless hatred against the grown-ups (i.e. conservatives)

Profiling is defined as a forensic SCIENCE based on analyzing common characteristics, not “profiling is the act of assigning suspicion based on irrelevant characteristics” as you wrote in a previous post. Methinks you made that up. Snap.

Then you tried the dirty trick of taking something out of context. My full statement was “Conversely, the ball-less ones must be the cowardly Dims WHO HAVE REPEATEDLY TRY TO ‘LOSE’ OUR SOLDIERS’ VOTES.”

You chose to write “Conversely, the ball-less ones must be the cowardly Dims” i.e. you removed the FACT on which my profiling was based. Snap.

Furthermore, I have the balls to admit that I’m in favor of FACT-BASED profiling for important issues such as foiling terrorist plots. To do otherwise is asinine, i.e. donkey-ish. It is a fact that the military votes lean heavily to the Right; fact-based profiling. Furthermore, it is another fact that the Left has repeatedly tried to deprive the military of its right to vote; FACT-BASED profiling.

What I am laughing at is the Donkeys’ love of reviling fact-based profiling while engaging in opinion-based profiling. I’m wasting my breath and will ignore your future posts. P.S. Buy a dictionary.

The common phrase is “mom.” Google it. And this common usage is perfect for the children who populate the conservative universe. It would be nice if you had a point next time, instead of publicly wrestling with your sexual identity. Relax, I won’t ask if you don’t tell.

The United States Military, as a body, votes overwhelmingly Republican. Why aren’t more Democrats in uniform, serving theri country? Why aren’t YOU?
Cowardice? Laziness? Lack of patriotism? Bad morals? Drooling inbred idiocy?
Since you’re a liberal, I suspect a combination of all the above- and more.

You have posted and lied under quite a few handles on PJM. Your IP is banned from even commenting on many of the PJM blogs no matter what the handle you use. You’ve made a great many contradictory, and quite honestly patently absurd claims under those many gender conflicted pseudonyms.

You are a college student, and not a very intelligent one. You disappeared from PJM during the exam periods and into the start of the holidays. You’ll afflict the few PJM blogs that still haven’t banned you with your inanity for about another month. Then Mom or Dad drives you or puts you on a plane or train back to your current school. Undoubtedly with a great sigh of relief.

Now, you are accomplished at raising the ire of intelligent people who would normally ignore a sophomoric and ankle biting pissant like yourself, I will give you that. But keep some faint glimmer of rationality and don’t let your various pseudonyms convince each other that any personal claim you make will be taken with anything but mocking derision.

Claiming that you have served in the military will directly contradict fables you’ve told under other pseudonyms. You shouldn’t go there. But since you are as sublimely stupid as they come, you will probably try.

I love how these folks equate the military with mass murderers: “I asked if he actually believed there could be a Christian method of slaughtering people in combat”.

Uh, ever hear of “self defense”?

OK. You are a doc at an isolated mission hospital in Africa. Some local “freedom fighters” come in, start murdering your patients and raping your nurses.

do you say: I’m a Christian, I turn the other cheek?

Fine. When I worked in Africa, the Catholic missionaries didn’t carry guns. So they took five of our nuns out and shot them. They turned the other cheek and died.

So far so good.

But at another (Protestant mission), these pastors also did not carry guns, and as a result they watched as the thugs did horrible things to their wives and daughters before they finally murdered them.

They forgot the part where Jesus mentioned “greater love hath no man if he gives is life for a friend”.

so yes, I’ll turn the other cheek for myself, but not when the helpless are in danger.

“Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one [World War II]. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.” –George Orwell.

If McCarthy ever finds the need to call 911 does he realize he will be calling to invoke the help of uniformed people who walk around with guns on their hips and bullets in their belts? Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive. Ourselves.

Okay, which of those no longer exists? Go ahead. Dazzle us. I know you’d rather talk about vomit and cow scat. That’s a pretty typical response from a conservative. But rise above and prove your mettle, boy! Take this chance to excel! Leverage this opportunity! All you have to do is show how slavery, fascism, nazism and communism no longer exist.

War has ended
–slavery in America
–Nazism in Germany (and the ruthless Nazi occupation of a myriad of European countries)
–fascism in Italy
–communism in the USSR (and the USSR’s ruthless occupation of a myriad of neighboring countries)

Have some of these things returned? Yes. Will others return in the future? Yes. You’re not in Kansas. However, I do believe the people who were freed by these wars against tyranny thought it was worth it.

Good thing he was opposed by the British with their outmoded morality, instead of someone like the reactionary leftist hero Stalin, or Mao or Pol Pot, otherwise Diapers would have been taken down a basement and shot in the back of the head.

Gandhi advised the Jews of Europe to go passively to their deaths in Hitler’s ovens. Some may regard him as a holy man of exalted morality, but in reality he was in many ways something of a monster, as utopians generally are.

“Patriotism — An abstract word used to describe a type of behavior as harshly practical as good brakes and good tires. It means that you place the welfare of your nation ahead of your own even if it costs you your life.”

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue–and thoroughly immoral– doctrine that ‘violence never solves anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”

You’re right, I should be more compassionate. I made you look bad. Made you appear ignorant and histrionic by pointing out the emptiness of your claim that war ended slavery and communism and fascism, etc. Ridiculous on its face and impossible to defend, as your silence on the challenge demonstrates. Now you’re in Google spin. Here, I’ll do the liberal thing and apologize . . . I’m sorry for making you look like a schmuck. There, now maybe you can get on with your life.

BTW: Heinlein was a conservative as a young man. he got progressively more liberal the older (and wiser) he got.

“A believer in a political doctrine that emphasizes individual liberty and a lack of governmental regulation and oversight both in matters of the economy (‘free market’) and in personal behavior where no one’s rights are being violated or threatened.”

Zoom in on “…emphasizes individual liberty and a lack of governmental regulation and oversight…” That is not the Democratic Party, which is the Liberal Party. More regulation equals less individual liberty.

All they have in common is that they both start with the same letter. Get that dictionary.

““A believer in a political doctrine that emphasizes individual liberty and a lack of governmental regulation and oversight both in matters of the economy (‘free market’) and in personal behavior . . .”

You want to regulate a woman’s right to choose. You want to forbid gay marriage. You want to prohibit somebody smoking a joint to ease the pain of terminal illness. You want to continue tax subsidies to the richest companies in the world under the guise of the free market. You want to bypass the Constitution with “letters” that allow illegal search and seizure. You want to demand papers from people who you think “look” suspicious. You want pre-emptive wars and nation building.

Those are conservative views. In short, you love big government interference as long as it supports your narrow world view. Don’t come at me with that semantic bullshit. Save it for your Fox News circle jerk. Get beyond that dictionary and you might find the truth.

“I asked if he actually believed there could be a Christian method of slaughtering people in combat”

Probably not, but we know what the Socialist way is. We found out from the Nazis, Bolsheviks, Khemer Rouge, etc. If only there were a doctrine of compassion that might moderate the atrocities of the Socialists. Wait, I know.

You’re proof that a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. You’ve memorized a few facts (lowest level of cognitive thinking in Bloom’s taxonomy) but no ability to go to the higher levels of thinking and come to logical conclusions with those few facts.

BTW, I won’t reply to the next spittle of venom you spew so go ahead and think you’re clever with some typical Leftist bitchy remark, which is the 1st type of argument you and they run to when confronted with too many facts. (Lowest level of rebuttal).

I don’t think Colman McCarthy represents the view of the Ivy League or of the mainstream left. Four of the 8 Ivy League schools already have ROTC on campus and at least three of the remaining four have begun efforts to bring it back after the repeal of DADT. Ironically, Cornell, the “only school with a peace studies program”, is the only Ivy with Army, Navy and Air Force ROTC. When I was at Princeton, I found the men and women in ROTC to generally be smart and tough, as you might expect, and their presence added to the campus experience, especially during the First Gulf War when I was in college. More importantly, I felt that Ivy League educated officers would be a good thing for the country. (ROTC isn’t the only way, as David Petraeus is a West Point grad and has a Ph.D from Princeton) So, Colman McCarthy doesn’t speak for me; I think many Ivy Leaguers, even liberal ones like myself, think that ROTC has a place on campus.

I am my college professor’s favorite pupil. He calls himself a “philosophical progressive” (whatever that means) and he tells wonderful stories about Mao Zedong and how deeply spirtual it is to become a Progressive. He told us not to pay any attention to those horrible rumors that the Conservatives preach to us about Brother Mao’s murder of 60 million. I know it’s a lie, that’s what a girl on Facebook said. After all, President Obama had a Mao ornamate hanging fron the White House Christmas tree, right on cool. After learning all of these new political ideas, I went out and got the latest Che Guevara t-shirt. It is so rad. My professor went to Harvard like Obama did so I know he loves Che too. My professor said Hollywood helped to revive another leftist martyr but my uncle (who was in the Army) said Hollywood has dutifully churned out yet another cinematic agitprop paean and that I should read to try to discern why many supposedly democratic, civil libertarian liberals still swoon over this Stalinist mass-murderer. What ever that means, later dude.

Contrast today’s leftists with their forefathers in the 1930′s. At least they were willing to stand up for their beliefs. Does anyone believe that Colman McCarthy or any of the leftist trolls like “Sensi” would be willing to join the “Lincoln Brigade” during the Spanish Civil War?

For that matter, where are the modern day equivalents of leftist troops fighting for freedom from oppression in Darfur, Somalia, Afghanistan or dozens of other places around the world? Where are the strong words and condemnations of those who oppress women, children, homosexuals or believers of different religions? Has Colman McCarthy or Sensi ever done anything in word of deed to stop honour killings or the burning of schools? I have, along with my American and British and allied comrades in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and never seen any of the leftists, save the occasional media troll hiding behind the wire.

Keith, I’d give you a direct citation, but I’ve lost all my archives from before 2003. I think Bertolt Brecht wrote it before WWII in a warning about Hitler, but that could be wrong. So the best I can do is suggest that you do a little Googling. Sorry.

Two decades ago, I knew Colman McCarthy before he had gone completely around the bend. He was a former Trappist monk who somehow felt the urge to out himself as a moral philosopher without satisfactory mental and moral paraphrenalia. He visited my home at Christmas once and I stopped by his home once for a few minutes. He’s one of those monomaniacs without an ability to make any judgments except self-lacerations.

He has a certain paraphilia of masochism, I believe, and projects it out onto his fellow citizens. Sadly, the Washington Post is sinking beneath the waves almost as rapidly as the NYT, although the TV cable outlet carrying Yankee games may keep the NYT afloat. Its journalism certainly won’t The Post has no similar life preserver I know of.

Reading McCarthy is like some sort of soft-core porn of the soul. He should read “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder and get off his high horse.

We don’t hate the military. We hate bigots. But hey, if that’s what it takes – you whimpering about leftists – to remove such homophobic and anachronistic policies, great. Just remember, we hate babies, that’s why we support a woman’s right to choose, just like you hate Mexicans because you support building a wall. Why do you hate Mexicans?

Only walls against illegal Mexicans. To maintain open borders will sooner or later bankrupt our already massive social welfare system as in California (but I’m sure you approve). Why do you hate poor people? You give them welfare to make them dependent. You give them money for having more children, they have even more children, and become even more dependent. Why do you hate unemployed workers? You extend their benefits to make them dependent on government handouts and stay home, not work. Why do you hate people with health insurance? You pass Obamacare and insurance costs increase. Your compassionate sensitivity will turn us into another Greece. Then who will bail us out? Perhaps China and/or Russia, the communistically-failed stalwarts of the liberal left.

I would like to reply to this very nice takedown of an academic moron by making this observation:

while many in the military are more economically advantaged, there are likewise many of us who did grow up, shall we say — poor, or at least working class. Lack of material wealth does not make us “knuckle dragging neanderthals” anymore than our enlistment in the armed forces. Rather, the military is and has been a good way to pay for school and earn a living (while getting on the job training — oftentimes more educational and future career building than college) that appeals to those of us lower economic bracket types who have a bit more ambition than to flip burgers part time while racking up significant debt (or holding our hands out for need based grants rather than going out and doing something for the money), and at least have what it takes to meet the entrance requirements, as well as the spine to face the rigors of military service.

McCarthy is free to espouse his opinion for one reason and one reason only. Because rough men stand ready to do violence on his behalf. I wonder if he realizes that if the Talibam somehow took over, his kind are the first ones they’d line up against walls and shoot.

McCarthy and those like him (after reading the commentary, ‘Sensay’ comes to mind) are simply jealous. They can’t do what real men (and a few women) do. Guns…scare them. Life…scares them. The only thing that doesn’t seem to bother them is bloviating twiddledickery to the poor denuded fools (and I am thankfull my kids don’t go to the worthless schools McCarthy ‘teaches’ at..what a waste of money and tax dollars) who are either forced to listen to him, or are dumb enough to do so.

To paraphrase Jim Webb, (before he sold out), when asked how he felt about Jane Fonda, “I wouldn’t walk across the street to pizz on her teeth if her face were on fire”. McCarthy and those of his foolish ilk evoke the same response in me.